Exploration

So I’m on the book-signing schedule at SXSW04 as part of a five-person signature cage match that will last until only one person is left standing! Er, or something. Actually, I assume they’re going to kick us out of there by 1:15pm to clear enough space for all of Cory Doctorow‘s screaming fans. But hey, if you have a book you want to have signed by any of us, bring it along. I imagine you’ll also be able to buy Eric Meyer on CSS at the Borders booth where the signing will be held, as well as any of the other books listed. This signing comes just fifteen minutes after the panel in which I’m participating, so it looks like I’ll have to dash from one to the other.

When they asked me if I was game for a book signing, I did recommend that they get copies of Eric Meyer on CSS because it seemed beyond scummy to have them stock up the first edition of Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide when the second edition will be coming out within a week or two of the signing. Hey, I’m lookin’ out for ya. Now all I have to do is think up some witty phrases to inscribe.

(If you’re in the Austin area but aren’t going to be attending SXSW04, you can still drop by and heckle us for free by getting an iF! pass.)

In the past three weeks, I’ve tried to hack (with varying levels of success) XSLT, Perl, and JavaScript. Since I’m no better than a middling-fair programmer in any of those languages, I suppose some confusion was inevitable, but it seems like it’s always XSLT that gets me. Thankfully, Chriztian Steimeier provided a solution for my XSLT problem. The way that templates get called and nest and interact with each other continues to befuddle me, but I hope that it will one day make a modicum of sense.